Archive for the ‘Site’ Category

The time is coming for the final minutes of diploma work. Now, I take a moment to review some of the most important reviews I’ve had in the past months, trying to extract some useful ideas for what will be my final presentation.

The following was commented on a tutorial headed by Gisle Løkken, and with the participation of other students on May 25th:

– To propose Rosengård as a kind of temporary tax-haven, with site-specific trade laws to allow commerce to flourish more easily.

– How would economic development affect the community? What would change in the face of the neighborhood in relation to this development? And how would these changes relate to the people who live there? Think of this project’s evolution in time: (un)projected growth.

– Gardening vs Farming: what is more realistic and productive for a place like Rosengård? Show this in the project, make plant-growing a VISIBLE activity.

– “I wanna see the goats” – Can Rosengård have space for activities like shepharding, and other seemingly out-of-place trades?

– The meaning of work as a tool, socially and ethically, in human development, applied to the people who live in Rosengård.

—–

On Thursday 27th and Friday 28th of May, the Third Confrontation for the diploma took place in the school. Working under Trudi Jaeger (DAV) and Sverre Sondresen (APP), the following are points that were mentioned in relation to my project:

– The project as a reason for people to stay in Rosengård. So far, people have very few reasons to stay in the community. Could this project be a start for change?

– Joint solutions coming from both the authorities and the people.

– A bazaar proposal that makes use of the public AND the private space. Not only as a “new” activity built in space, but also making use of existing spaces: firs t floors, corner shops, etc.

– The project as a multicultural quilt, where every patch is equally valuable and yet as unique and “on display” as the rest.

– The bazaar: a nice place to be, a nice place to visit. Visiting Rosengård has the great potential of acting as a reality check: people coming here to a bazaar will find a community eager to work and earn a better life, opposed to the riots that Rosengård is known for.

– Simplify my registration drawings, keeping the energy and feelings found in them while incorporating colour to represent the variety found in Rosengård.

– The pic-nic blanket: a place to display, make evident and share.

– Build more models of the actual projects, in different scales. Explore materiality (remember the differences between shopping mall and bazaar when it comes to the sensorial experience), use and scale for design purposes. Very important now.

– If you are too realist, you end up becoming a pessimist. Therefore, it is important to remember the poetry of dreaming.

– Graffiti as a way to deal with frustration and establish an identity. Rosengård is notoriously devoid of graffiti, is this the sign of a population that does not want to be associated with their neighborhood? Additionally, could architecture offer a chance to reterritorialize the neighborhood and make it “valid” to display your pride to live in Rosengård?

– “Graffiti is like when dogs pee. They are not vandalizing a wall. They are defining their territory.”

– Define a strategy / timeline: how does the project grow and evolve? Who does it affect? What will the actions cause? Can it be a kind of chain reaction, where small actions end up causing full blown effects? This is already suggested in the yellow Post Its (see previous entries).

– Use drawings as a design and exploration tool: draw in big sizes (scale up); incorporate to exhibition space; work on the same drawings throughout a span of time – evolution; print on transparent paper for further exploration; use drawings to re-structure the spatial reality of the neighborhood and the project.

We asked all the students in the group to present their projects concisely with a short synopsis. Sverre and I didn’t know anything. They were given 20 minutes each before lunch. The group were already collaborating with each other and were much more familiar with each others projects than either Sverre or I so we consigned everyone with a specific student. They were asked to give their person specific advice about what to concentrate on according to where they were in the process: i.e. to reflect upon a core issue. We others could then either disagree or elaborate on these observations.

Roberto:

Flying kites in the ghetto.

Malmø is one of the fastest-growing migrant areas in Scandinavia.

Bazaar – place where people can utilize and share their skills.

Roberto has vibrant drawing skills! This talent should be used! Make Graffiti idea much larger. Test it out in public space with participants.

A strategy on timeline – what it generates – a new structure.

Add something – open up.

Should focus his project on public space(s).

Discussion about graffiti, about conquering and taking space. The energy this sort of people-participation project would create, if, for example, people from different cultures were encouraged to ‘take’ their space.

Roberto should get locals to make their own marks in the area.

He should start concentrating by building a working model in i.e. 1-25 in order to develop the inter-relationships of the different cultural spaces and their interfaces.

——

On June 9th, I had a tutorial with Vibeke Jensen. We discussed the following (I add my own thoughts in this text):

0. General comments

– Explore the conceptual models more and more.

– Integrate gardening into activities like the skate park, and other functions as well. Why should this activity be confined to the colonial gardens?

– Work quickly with conceptual models, and move on to design.

– What I show does not necessarily need to be a finished product in itself, but it should enough detail and information to be understandable.

– Consider other activities and forms of expression, such as hand ad-painting, gossiping, etc.

1. The bazaar – Herrgården

– Make a model that shows inside space, not just the outside. Think of negative, carved space.

– The management of scale is good for the neighborhood’s inhuman conditions.

– An “exploded block” is a good concept. It shows the potential of a single block, the basic construction unit of Rosengård. Explore further consequences of this idea.

2. The promenade – Kryddgården

– The use of lines as a landscape-intervention concept is OK, but they should be soft, adding some contrast to the existing geometry.

– I should define the situations to happen between the buildings: the urban stages, sheltered spaces, community meeting points, etc.

– Integrate this intervention to the landscape, make it a part of the context and not just something that “landed there”.

– How much of a line do I need to show, in order to make a line? What does a line have to offer?

– Think of softer materials.

3. The skate park – Örtagården

– Keep in mind that it can be an activity that includes many people, not just young skateboarders. It can be a meeting point for people interested in urban culture, photography, curious neighbors… even grandmas. I don’t skate myself, I’m almost 30 and yet I am more interested than I ever was, in these activities.

– It can be a kind of agora, a meeting point where things happen. A change in Rosengård’s monofunctionality.

4. 1:1 Sketch

– Make architecture, create space!

– Construct situations, think of the situationist movement?

– Documentate, and get people included.

—–

Extracts from a June 9th conversation with Camilla Ryhl, KTF:

– Accesible architecture should not only be functional, but also available and open.

– When a person lacks one sense, the other senses sharpen. Think of how these other senses can be stimulated through architecture.

– Ground surfaces and materials can give a good amount of information.

– Be careful when it comes to overstimulation.

The bazaar

– Check out Gjellerup Parken in Aarhus.

– Shopping centres can be a difficult environment for the visually impaird. They offer no visual nagivational clues. They are the same in every direction. They are usually disconnected from their context.

– Take the characteristics of a shopping centre and create a contrast.

– Different-sized units and activity-enclaves in Rosengård are good ideas. They provide a sensorial spatial configuration.

– When it comes to the bazaar, take a couple of units and develop: how do they relate? What happens in between the units?

The skate park

– How do disabled people interact with it?

– A generational meeting place.

– Give more reasons for people to come here.

—–

Tutorial with Erling Olsen, TTA. June 15th, 2010. I intend to use different materials according to the needs of my sites. These are general comments from this conversation:

– Wood is slippery, but can be transformed and manipulated by people, as opposed to concrete, which offers little chance for interaction.

– Create friction in the surfaces. Winters and water can be dangerous.

– If I use wood, think that it won’t last forever, it will probably have to be replaced every 5 to 10 years. Additionally, wood expands and contracts and is vulnerable to fungus, so it must be isolated from moisture (rubber is a good option for this), both on roof and ground. If this wood is dry, it will last a long time.

– Think of detailing. Show how this will be built.

—–

Tutorial with Ivo Barros, Sivilarkitekt BAS. June 16th, 2010.

– How do I come to this place? Go from Zoom Out to Zoom In.

– Put my maps in order and try to read a coherent story there. From Scandinavia to Rosengård.

– Show Rosengård in relation to the city of Malmö and its context.

– Work as a masterplan, but show some areas more in detail -à Explain why I chose the sites I work with. Start working in a larger scale and then show how things meet.

– The relation of the intervention with the rest of the city: why would people from Malmö come to Rosengård? -à Think of the comparative advantages of my project and show them.

– Expand my interventions all the way to the main roads that limit Rosengård, and create invitations.

– Use my experience as a foreigner to my own advantage. I have some first-hand knowledge and different takes on issues like urban life, fear, etc.

DAV: the under-used tool

– Use DAV as an exploratory tool. Work with photos and drawings. Explore the 5 small conceptual models and work with them as ways to understand space.

On Thursday 27th and Friday 28th of May, the Third Confrontation for the diploma took place in the school. Working under Trudi Jaeger (DAV) and Sverre Sondresen (APP), the following are points that were mentioned in relation to my project:

– The project as a reason for people to stay in Rosengård. So far, people have very few reasons to stay in the community. Could this project be a start for change?

– Joint solutions coming from both the authorities and the people.

– A bazaar proposal that makes use of the public AND the private space. Not only as a “new” activity built in space, but also making use of existing spaces: firs t floors, corner shops, etc.

– The project as a multicultural quilt, where every patch is equally valuable and yet as unique and “on display” as the rest.

– The bazaar: a nice place to be, a nice place to visit. Visiting Rosengård has the great potential of acting as a reality check: people coming here to a bazaar will find a community eager to work and earn a better life, opposed to the riots that Rosengård is known for.

– Simplify my registration drawings, keeping the energy and feelings found in them while incorporating colour to represent the variety found in Rosengård.

– The pic-nic blanket: a place to display, make evident and share.

– Build more models of the actual projects, in different scales. Explore materiality (remember the differences between shopping mall and bazaar when it comes to the sensorial experience), use and scale for design purposes. Very important now.

– If you are too realist, you end up becoming a pessimist. Therefore, it is important to remember the poetry of dreaming.

– Graffiti as a way to deal with frustration and establish an identity. Rosengård is notoriously devoid of graffiti, is this the sign of a population that does not want to be associated with their neighborhood? Additionally, could architecture offer a chance to reterritorialize the neighborhood and make it “valid” to display your pride to live in Rosengård?

– “Graffiti is like when dogs pee. They are not vandalizing a wall. They are defining their territory.”

– Define a strategy / timeline: how does the project grow and evolve? Who does it affect? What will the actions cause? Can it be a kind of chain reaction, where small actions end up causing full blown effects? This is already suggested in the yellow Post Its (see previous entries).

– Use drawings as a design and exploration tool: draw in big sizes (scale up); incorporate to exhibition space; work on the same drawings throughout a span of time – evolution; print on transparent paper for further exploration; use drawings to re-structure the spatial reality of the neighborhood and the project.

Bazaars are a traditional element in the lives of many people, particularly in countries of Arab background. The concept of bazaar is also strongly related to the souq, which is a market in an Arab city. A first glance at the bazaar shows a decidedly commercial nature and spatial organization, where similar activities tend to cluster: industrial workshops, eating areas, fabric tradesmen, all formed nuclei of activitiy, or actions, in which the visitor could orientate themselves even if they had never visited a particular bazaar before.

What makes a bazaar different than a shopping centre? Following Khansari and Yavari, there are at least 2 main differences:

1. In shopping centres, the manufacturing process is gone. It is just a place for trading. There is no connection to the process of making the finished items that are to be sold, and there is no chance of experiencing this process. From The Persian Bazaar: veiled space of desire, I extract:

“Bazaars were noisy; some, like the streets of metalworkers, were overwhelming with the sounds reverberating on walls and vaults, so noisy in fact that in recent times apprentices were moved into open spaces around bazaars for the loudest operations affecting metals. Noises do not appear in photographs, but dust does, and all bazaars were filled with particles of work, the sawdust of woodworkers or the threads of textiles, mixed with the dust of architecture and of endlessly shuffling feet. This dust is like a veil which covers the visitor or like the filter through which he reaches whatever he sought, the object of his desires. And to the dust must be added odors, the sweet smells of candies and pastries, the rich scents of endless perfumes, the rough smell of leather or of paint, the hard odors of working bodies making things or carrying them around.

Making things was not simply a technical activity now gone from shopping centers, it was a continuous sensory experience for the eyes, the nose, the ears, at times the taste buds and even touch. That experience could be exhilarating and attractive or repulsive and depressing. But, when compared to the aseptic quality of our shopping malls, it always was a profoundly human experience…”

Marrakech Souq

2. The other difference comes from architecture. As opposed to modern shopping centres made for easy digestion with shiny glass and polished floors (Rosengård Centrum?),

The architecture of the bazaar was an experience of discovery, it created a mystery in which both men and things played a strange role, only partly defined through their specific function of selling and making or of buying and waiting to be bought. By its skillful manipulation of light and of built surfaces, this architecture sought to attract and to fascinate. Together with the noises, the smells, and the visual festival of colorful items on display, it proclaimed the complexity of life and something of its illusory quality. Everything may be possible and available, but perhaps nothing is real.

In the bazaar, we can distinguish 3 elements:

– Action: it is the space, the bazaar presenting itself as a set of possibilities in the horizon.

– Reaction: it is what people do in the bazaar. It is worth mentioning that reactions to bazaars are highly personalized and temporary. Going to a bazaar can very well be a completely different experience if the visit takes place at a different time of the day or year. Again, it would appear that the action is merely to shop, but as anybody who has visited this kind of street markets know, there are a number of invisible actions too: smelling, seeing, thinking, navigating… and they all conform one single, yet multilayered architectural and sensorial landscape.

– Production: it is the experience of going to a bazaar. Among a myriad other things, “the souq was a place where people could come and talk, or sit down to tell stories.” It is not the same to walk across a bazaar when it is open and working, than when it is closed at night and it’s just a transit space. The production always has a psychological and emotional element, for it is an experience in itself. The lines of flight take a different meaning each time.

We all know that neighborhoods can be quite varied. From one block to the next, the urban landscape can change completely, and often nearby streets are regarded as being completely different from our own. We may know the guys across the street but have no idea who lives 100m down the road. Rosengård is a liminal community where immigrants are the majority, and it is known that there are about 50 different language groups distributed across the area. Thus, neighborhoods become microcosmos.

Exile on Amiralsgatan

From the nationality map, one can see that Rosengård acts as a haven for certain nationalities. Why do we stick around our own people, even in the furthest corners of the planet? One answer can be that it’s simple: in ethnic neighborhoods it’s easier to feel understood, to buy the same roots for your mother’s stew, to say hi in your own language, and why not, it may be simpler to get a job.

My experience as a foreigner in Norway tells me that while there are actually very few Costa Ricans in Bergen (and supposedly no more than 100 in the whole country), it is convenient to have my countrymen around. There are no Costa Rican corner shops, restaurants or churches, but it is good to smile and be understood.

At the same time, this is a self-imposed exile from your new country which very often earns little public support from local residents (notable exceptions include Little Italy and China Town). One might only wonder what role does the place you live in play in this situation, and if it can be a tool to break this wall.

Choosing a site

I chose 5 sites based on the density of use by local people: cars and trains come and go, but pedestrians often live here. Very few people walk through Rosengård casually. Therefore, these are the main urban spaces where I will work: located in different parts of the district, they aim to knit a web of urban life into its surroundings. After all, if the neighbors can have it, so can we.

Every city in every country has them: urban black holes. Places in the map which most of us only known by name, or by references (the news, stories or even urban legends). Having grown up in San José (Costa Rica), I confess to being an ignorant when it comes to places like La Carpio or Los Cuadros. I have never been there. I only know they exist because some else says they do.

Are these urban black holes places we don’t know much about, or do we actually ignore them openly? And more important: what makes these neighborhoods true dark spots in the map? Is there a way of redrawing a community so that it shows on mental maps and not just geographic ones?

The ghetto holds a great potential as an urban communicator: it is a place to share stories of arrival and departure, of new life and also of generational gaps. It is a place of hope and new beginnings, but it is a place of loneliness too. Rosengård is one such place: it is a character in itself, in the lives of the people who live and work in it. How do people interact with these character?

“… space becomes an ‘acting place’ rather than the place of action.”

Bal, 1997

As we can read in the news from time to time, this relationship between place and inhabitants can be quite tense and often mutually rejectful. It is hard to point down where the root of the problem may lie, but one can wonder: can giving this place a more humane face result in a change in direction, as to how the people of Rosengård treat their home? Many neighbourhoods have these “humane” elements, be it parks, gardens, corners, shops or cafeterias, these elements create points through which people can engage their life-contexts and relate. A reason to break the ice, so to say.

Rosengård is divided in 10 districts, 3 of which are unpopulated (the industrial area, the shopping centre and the graveyard in the North). The central districts of Törnrosen, Örtagården and Herrgården, bounded on the North by Amiralsgatan and on the South by fältet (the field), hold the youngest population by percentage of residents under 24, and the highest registered unemployed between 18 and 64. Is this a coincidence, or are these two situations related?

Being young and new in a strange country can prove difficult. You often don’t understand the local “codes” (the dress code, manners, habits, do’s and dont’s, etc.), don’t know anyone to assist you in your new home (lack of networking), very often you won’t get any sympathy from the locals (especially if you live in a neighbourhood that is in the news for stoning the firepeople), and most important: many times you don’t speak the language. These situations can very often transform hope and good intentions into frustration and resentment towards the new country and its inhabitants (not to mention that being jobless is very stressing in itself, even in your own hometown).

“…a loan is better than charity as it enables people to help themselves.”

– Maimonides

Initiatives such as microcredits are a tool to young, driven people: an opportunity to make some money. The public space is the arena where many people earn the bread every day. Itinerant businesses such as magazine kiosks, hot dog stands or permanent ones like internet and online game houses can be put to work with a small credit from local governments, would eventually grow and create a few more jobs, and most importantly, provide for income and independence to its operators, while at the same time paying for themselves.

About 47% of the population of Örtagården in central Rosengård, is under 24. The landscape is charged with hilly paths (good for the legs!), small football goals, slides and swings. It seems like a good place to move, where your body will be put to work (watch out in the winter though). However, if one looks closer, it seems like a pretty cold place to be when you are neither a kid, nor an adult. If you are old but not SO old, and young but not SO young, there is nothing here for you. Has this topography forgotten the young?